Vladimir Kornilov
We have finally been explained the very rules of the “rules-based world” that all Western leaders talk about. It turns out that everything is very simple. Practically the only rule is the unconditional submission of absolutely everyone to the “liberal hegemon” – the United States. Nothing else is required. Simply!
Let me remind you that recently the phrase “world order based on rules” has become universal in the West. Now it is difficult to say who was the first to introduce this into the global discourse, but the first to draw attention to this as a systemic problem was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who wrote the article “The World at t-he Crossroads and the Sy-stem of International Rela-tions of the Future” in 2019.
It was in this article that our chief diplomat named the reason for this phenomenon: “From the unwillingness of the West to accept today’s realities, when after centuries of economic, political and military dominance it loses the prerogative of the sole formation of the global agenda, the concept of “rule-based order” arose. These ” rules” are in-vented and selectively combined depending on the current needs of the authors of the specified term, which t-he West is persistently intr-oducing into everyday life.”
Lavrov then noted that the concept of such a world, in fact, replaces the rules that really existed until now, which developed after the Second World War. They boiled down to unshakable observance of international law and subordination to the decisions of the UN Security Cou-ncil, within which the su-perpowers for decades were forced to seek painful compromises for themselves.
With the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, the term “world based on rules” has become absolutely dominant in the speeches of Western leaders, experts, and journalists. Russian President Vladimir Putin in his recent speeches has repeatedly mentioned this notorious formula, pointing out its odiousness.
It is no coincidence that the head of state remembered it at the solemn moment of the admission of new subjects of the Russian Federation on September 30 of this year. Putin then said: “We can only hear from all sides: the West defends an order based on rules. Where did they come from? Who even saw these rules? “It’s just designed for fools. Russia is a great millennial power, a country-civilization. And it won’t live by such rigged, false rules.”
As the use of the notorious formula became more frequent, more and more questions began to sound about what kind of “rules” these are and where they can be read. Well, in fact, since you accuse Russia of violating the global order based on certain rules, then you must show the world at least some kind of code where these rules are formulated at least in a concise form. And then somehow it became uncomfortable – almost like in the classic interlude by Arkady Raikin : “How much did you do today? – What? – Well, what you have to do, how much.”
And this obvious gap was decided to fill in by Foreign Affairs magazine, which has been the world flagship of the ideological struggle against Russia for a century now. In its latest issue (for January-February of the next year), a fundamental programmatic article by the well- known ideologist of global liberalism Robert Kagan “The Free World If You Can Keep It. Ukraine and American Interests” was published.
Just in case, it should be made clear that Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Kagan is no ordinary political scientist. At one time he worked at the State Department, advised the most anti-Russian presidential candidates ( like John McCain and Hillary Clinton ), constantly defending the need for external armed aggression. He is considered one of the architects of the war in Iraq, since it was Kagan who was the author of the allegations that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York. It’s probably not worth saying that it all turned out to be a lie in the end.from start to finish. But who cares after the war?
And although now Kagan appears in public only as a theoretician, his influence on the practical formation of US foreign policy can hardly be overestimated. Suffice it to recall that he is the husband of US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Yes, yes, the one who organized the Kiev Maidan in 2013, having become famous throughout the world for distributing cookies and the rude phrase “F**k the EU !” (in mild translation: “To hell with the EU!”). It would probably be naive to assume that Kagan does not share his theoretical developments with his high-ranking wife, thereby influencing her position when formulating the current American strategy regarding Ukraine.
And the fact that the Nuland-Kagan family clan has a huge influence on building the aggressive policy of the United States is an obvious fact. The well-known American investigative journalist Robert Parry proved in a number of his publications that this clan actually created a complete closed cycle of family business in the war. True, almost immediately after these publications, Parry died suddenly (but we, of course, reject any conspiracy theory – we are not Western media).
Here’s what the described clan looks like now. Robert Kagan provides the ideological backing for the aggressive US foreign policy. His brother Frederick Kagan is considered a military expert and is directly connected with the military-industrial complex. In particular, he worked as an adviser to the head of the CIA, David Petraeus., which now acts as one of the main “talking heads” in the Western media on the Ukrainian conflict. Kimberly Kagan, Frederick’s wife, is also well known as the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of War, whose daily briefings and openly biased analytics form the basis for the world’s media coverage of the war in Ukraine. Well, and closes this effective chain of family ties is the same Victoria Nuland, who in practice carries out an aggressive policy. Such a family business on the blood.
So Robert Kagan, in his recent article, is trying to fill the ideological vacuum that has developed in the course of constant appeal to the formula “Order based on rules.” At the same time, he answers the question, what is the US national interest in fomenting a military conflict in Ukraine. And such a question is increasingly heard in the mouths of some figures, including the popular TV presenter Tucker Carlson who constantly asks him.
Kagan clearly explains to the public: the United States has been bearing a heavy burden of protecting “liberal hegemony” since the beginning of the last century. And as soon as America turns away a bit, to deal exclusively with its own problems, unreasonable Europe and Asia immediately start world wars, and “gangster nations” try to crush liberalism. Here the States have to intervene in global conflicts even at a time when nothing threatens the security of the United States itself.
The word “liberal” in its various derivatives is used almost fifty times in Kagan’s article! Analyzing the current situation, the author comes to a simple conclusion, which is highlighted separately by the magazine: “Defending Ukraine is protecting liberal hegemony. When Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and others say that the United States has vital interests in Ukraine, they do not mean, that the United States will be directly threatened by the defeat of Ukraine. They mean that the liberal world order will be threatened if Ukraine loses.”
It would seem, where is Ukraine and where is liberalism? What does the dictatorial regime of Kiev, using Nazi symbols, ideology, practice, have to do with democracy and liberal values? Kagan does not bother explaining such “trifles”. In the end, he paints the Second World War exclusively as a war of “liberal democracies” (mentioning only the United States and Britain) with “authoritarian regimes” (mentioning only Germany and Japan ). He simply keeps silent about the role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazism, otherwise he would have to explain how it happened that Stalin became the bulwark of the struggle for liberal values.
Accordingly, Kagan is clear about what Western leaders mean by the notorious formula mentioned above: “American leaders often talk about defending a rules-based international order, but Americans do not recognize the hegemony inherent in such a policy. They don’t realize that, as Reinhold Niebuhr once pointed out, the rules themselves are a form of hegemony, not neutral, but designed to maintain an international status quo in which American-backed liberal world has dominated for eight decades. Rule-based order is complementary to this hegemony.”
Everything is clear and unambiguous. A “rules-based world” is the complete hegemony (read: dictatorship) of the United States. That is the standard form of imperialism and colonialism. And it’s not about democracy at all. After all, according to the same Kagan, the United States was engaged in planting “liberal hegemony” even at a time when racism, apartheid, selective suffrage, the prohibition of opposition ideologies, that is, everything that a modern liberal would not recognize in any way, were state policy in the States. liberalism. That is why Ukraine or any other US ally can be led by the bloodiest dictator – he will still be considered a “liberal” as long as he follows the instructions of the “world hegemon”.
With his program article, the ideologist of global liberalism frankly substantiates the need for a direct military clash between the West and Russia. Not because of Ukraine – the Nuland-Kagan family clan does not care about it. Because of the need to keep the whole world in subjection, including their unreasonable European allies, who are not capable of anything without America. In fact, this is a creative development of the formula “F**k the EU!”, expressed by Victoria Nuland on the Kiev Maidan. True, now we are talking not only about the European Union, we are talking about a world war. The family clan, earning on wars, this time sends the whole planet to hell.
Well, Robert Kagan is to be commended for such exhaustive frankness. We already knew the answer to the question of what constitutes a “rules-based world”. But now we have proof that we can present to another world – one that, like Russia, does not want to submit to the dictatorship of a self-proclaimed “hegemon”.
